All languages change over time. English has undergone continuous change throughout its three major periods: Old English (roughly from 450 to 1100 AD), Middle English (from 1100 to 1500), and Modern English (from 1500 to the present). Sound is one of the most easily influenced parts of language to be subject to different changes. Sound change is…

This paper attempts to expound that China English boasting its own distinctive features on the levels of phonology, words, sentences and discourse has been playing an irreplaceable role in intercultural activities, though still in its infancy and in the process of developing and perfecting itself, and it now makes every effort to move towards…

A formal reading of word groups and a same/different listening test revealed that Hungarian Americans in South Bend, Indiana, exhibit a continuum in a short front unrounded low vowel phoneme, showing important differences between the informant's perception and production. The Hungarian-American and metropolitan Hungarian data were compared to…

From a survey of over a thousand "diapoints" emerges a clear distributional pattern of nasal vowels in the contemporary dialects of China. They tend to occupy the lower portion of the vowel space. Three hypotheses are proposed to explain this phenomenon and each hypothesis is examined against a broad data base. (Author/TL)

Describes the phonological and phonetic features of English as spoken in Pakistan and shows such distinctive patterns as anglicized, acrolectal, mesolectal, and basilectal varieties of Pakistani English. (45 references) (CB)

Reviews research studies that raise serious questions about phonological neutralization, that is, the merger of a contrast in certain contexts. Some findings cast doubt on the very existence of neutralization and the correctness of the theoretical principles that make assumptions based on neutralization. Reanalyzes neutralization in light of these…

This article discusses the influence of the Taino language on the Spanish of Puerto Rico. (Text is in Spanish.) (CLK)

Tonal "flip-flop" (reversal of pitch value in which a direct exchange of value between two items is necessarily involved) can be found in a significant number of modern Chinese dialects, where an opposite pitch pattern is observed for the traditional Yin/Yang dichotomy of tones. (Author/CB)

This article discusses consonant symbolism, that is, a process of modification or alternation of consonants, insofar as it relates to Yokuts. (CLK)

The phenomenon of retroflexion is discussed, and its occurrence in about 150 selected languages is examined from a geographical and a diachronic point of view. The clustering of such languages into distinct areas has been explained through the postulation of a hypothesis regarding their development in language. After a detailed examination of four…

This article outlines the history and development of the substratum theory concerning Spanish in the Americas, the basic tenet of the theory being the role of indigenous languages in phonological changes in Spanish. (CLK)

Standard manuals of Spanish pronunciation recognize that both [+continuant] and [-continuant] surface variants occur for the voiced obstruents/bdg/. Within generative phonology, it has been assumed that the systematic phonemic representation for these voiced obstruents should be [-continuant] /bdg/, with a rule of spirantization converting these…

Analysis of the distributional properties of non-syllabic vowels within word boundaries in Italian demonstrates: the role of phonological constraints on the distribution of non-syllabic words; the syllabification possibilities within each type of sequence by setting up a structural model; and the phonemic occurrences in vowel sequences collected…

A dialect survey of the Penghu Islands concluded that the Penghu dialects belong to the Southern Min; variation within the dialects is considerable in terms of changed tones, certain finals, and some lexical items; and the Penghu dialects can be further divided into two large groups. (Author/CB)

A study examining the mechanism of tone changes in the dialects of northern Chinese explored the geographic distribution on tone features manifested in 480 dialects. A set of prototypical tone patterns is proposed to form a basis for dialectal subgrouping and reconstruction of tone development. (Author/CB)